Mass spectrometry and mummies Professor Paul A. Haynes Biomolecular Frontiers Research Centre Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences Macquarie University, North Ryde, Sydney, Australia

The main analytical techniques used in this work are high resolution microscopy and several different types of mass spectrometry Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique which measures the mass of compounds at very high precision and accuracy In this work mass spectrometry has been used to determine the identity of lipids and fatty acids present in different compounds used in textiles for bodily preservation A different type of mass spectrometry is also the basis for carbon-14 dating

An example of Gas chromatography – Mass spectrometry data showing identification of lipids and fatty acids in a textile sample

- Our research focus at Macquarie is on peptide and protein identification and quantitation using mass spectrometry, which is also known as proteomics. - We perform environmental proteomics experiments in a wide range of biological systems

- Previous published reports have included the analysis of immune system response proteins from tissue samples from a 500-year-old Incan mummy, and analysis of stomach contents from Oetzi the Austrian iceman - In our future research we plan to examine minute amounts of tissue samples from Egyptian mummies such as those analyzed in the current study. We expect that identification of these ancient proteins will provide valuable information about how they lived, and how they died.